Friday, May 2, 2008

Tailor-made Shorts

When my parents were in town, we went to a huge market where you could buy almost anything you can imagine. My mom was looking for material so she could have a qipao made for my sister, so we walked down aisles and aisles of little stalls selling hundreds of kinds of fabric. I began to realize that given how cheap fabric is, and how cheap labor is, that having clothes made would be really fun.


I wanted to have some shorts made because summer is almost here (it seems like just a few weeks ago I was complaining about a scarf not being enough, and now I wish I had an air conditioner in my room).


My goal was to have shorts that would make people in America say, "Cool shorts. Where'd you buy them?" And I'd say, "I didn't, I had them tailored." Finally I found the perfect shop and bought one pattern that had black Chinese characters written in cursive on a beige background, and other with white, old pictographic characters on black material.


I took them to the tailor, brought along the one pair of shorts that I had as a model, and that was that. I don't even know where you would find a tailor in America.


I went to pick up my shorts yesterday with a certain degree of trepidation. It's not expensive, but I still didn't want them to look horrible. I'm really glad that the shorts I showed her were ones that were really expensive (imagine, the only pair of really nice shorts I've ever bought, and I end up making two copies of it and adjusting it slightly to perfectly fit my build). The shorts look so sweet.


Check out the black on beige:



Here's the final tally:


Material for shorts: 18 kuai

Employing a tailor: 35 kuai

Having custom-made shorts that you think look really awesome: way more than $8-worth

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Those are very sweet-looking shorts! and the price is unbeatble.

Anonymous said...

OK. Aunt Gwennie criticized my previous comment. She told me I should have said that your shorts are "sweeeeeet" or perhaps I should abandon the whole slang-thing and just say "I like'em."

Anonymous said...

yo will sweet shorts! btw I'm gonna be goin to Dickinson next yr. and theres a kid going there from Chengdu, i told him you go to the minority university and he said he lived by there. So if you meet a Chinese kid named Tony ask em if he's goin to D.C. next yr!

Anonymous said...

Hey Will! It's Mich :) I've been reading your blog and I figured it was time to comment! Those shorts are awesome! That's so cool that you picked out the fabric and got them tailored to fit perfectly! Something you definitely can't find in America. I hope you are having fun! :)

Unknown said...

Lol. Very nice!

Melanie Penman said...

um will. are you serious? WHAT KIND OF SOCKS ARE YOU WEARING? the shorts are sweet. definitely not with that shirt though. the socks are killing me. you need another pair of shoes.

:D miss you.



ps. just the other day i outlawed dad wearing those kind of socks with me in public.. ever ;)